I took my daughter trick or treating for her first time last night, but before we left I wanted to get some pictures. Since it is Halloween, I wanted to give the photos a spooky feel to them, so I shot them immediately after the sunset. In order to achieve the look, I set the camera to underexposed the background about one and a half stops and then lit my daughter with an off camera flash that I was holding as high and as to the left as I could reach. The flash was set for 1/128th power and 70mm, I would have liked to narrow the flash beam more to create an even more spotlight look, but my daughter is not very cooperative so I left it slightly wider to make up for her movements. I didn’t use a really wide setting because, I didn’t want the all of the foreground lit.
As far as post production goes, I really didn’t do much. All of the post was done in Lightroom. I brought down the highlights on my daughter a bit, because even at the flashes lowest setting it was still strong due to how close I was to my daughter, and then on the background I boosted the clarity to nearly the max in order to give it a more surreal look. Finally I added a post crop vignette which helped to darken the trees that I used to as a kind of frame.
All and all I think they turned out pretty good for a quick a less than five minute portrait.
Great technique, with simple setup. Thanks for sharing that. Great mood!